I Love a Parade – The Big Smoke US

What did Trump do today? He’s only served a quarter of his term and like many other people I know, I’m so tired of being outraged. I don’t want to feel sick every time I turn the news on, see Trump’s orange spray-tanned face, and know that this is how the rest of our world sees the United States. I don’t want to get angry knowing that a misogynistic, doddy, old racist who lost the popular vote holds the highest office in the country I literally bled for during the Iraq War. So, I watch the news and try not to get too worked up over what is going on.

It’s not that I’m apathetic. I’m not. Trump’s election has made me realize that we all need to pay closer attention to our local elections. He’s inspired a lot of action in the younger population who would normally be apolitical; and with him as an antagonist, there has been more women running for office than ever before. With Corker, Flake, Hatch, Gowdy, and thirty-four other Republican congressmen and women leaving the House and Senate this upcoming 2018 election, I guess he is draining the swamp, but he’s not doing it on purpose. They’re either getting so disgusted with our political system that they’re leaving, or they know he’s going to cause everything to crash down, exposing everyone’s crimes.

Is this good or bad? I’m an Independent, a member of the fastest growing political party. The party that will keep growing as long as the approval ratings of the White House and Congress keep chasing each other down the drain. From where I stand, I can see two possibilities: the first being, even worse politicians win in the Red States, or the second and more optimistic being, better people get elected and fix what he’s done so far.

All of these rats fleeing the sinking ship, not to mention the ones steering the damned thing, have made the word “politician” a synonym for greedy, thieving, corrupt, asshole, so why are we surprised that the only people who want to run for office nowadays are just that?

Trump’s election has made me realize that we all need to pay closer attention to our local elections.

Action. That’s what we need. Some of that may include social media, but for the last couple months I’ve felt that airing my complaints about this administration in a Facebook post does as much good as yelling into my own personally designed echo chamber, especially now that I’ve unfriended anyone who would proudly wear a MAGA hat. I had complained so much that if you only knew me by my profile you’d think I was a bitter, angry man.

So, I’ve tried to weather this storm by not getting so spun up about the torrent of insults to our country’s founding principles. Trump’s chief of staff said more than a half million Dreamers are unwilling “to get off their lazy ass,” I shake my head. Trump’s lawyers say that he should not talk to Mueller and the special FBI investigation because they (Trump’s lawyers) believe that he could not help but to lie, I sigh, maybe count to ten with my eyes closed.

But now, Cadet Bonespurs wants a military parade? This is the moron who awards a Purple Heart and says congratulations? This is the dipshit that compared combat in Vietnam to avoiding STDs? He dodged the draft five times and has never gone overseas to visit our men and women who put their lives on the line every day. Take a moment and let this sink in: for the first year of his presidency, he’d rather golf every weekend than go see the men and women who he sent to fight in the two different wars we’re still in today.

I say, let’s give him his damn parade. Let’s line up all our tanks and infantry and military bands and big missiles on flatbed trucks and pull them right down Pennsylvania Avenue. I can’t wait to see what happens. You think the combat veterans of this country got mad at the Dakota Access Pipeline? Let’s see what they do over this. One unknown protester and one photographer changed the world in 1989 at Tiananmen Square, let’s see what a few hundred combat veterans can do with their arms locked together in front of the White House.

We don’t need to be afraid of Trump. We need to fight where we need to and let him fail everywhere else. Even his voters will have to notice his continual lies, screw-ups, and mistakes. We’re headed into his second year, a year where we will have to borrow 1 trillion dollars. This is up 84% from last year when the Republicans shut down the government because they didn’t want to raise the debt ceiling one penny. If he wants to state facts that are easily proven untrue like “the biggest inauguration” or “the biggest viewership” for a State of the Union Address, let him do it. If he wants to choose to spend 25 billion on a useless wall, go for it. Let him stick his fingers in his ears and scream “Fake news!” every day and night.

Republicans, including the Evangelicals, are just being defensive because they don’t want to admit they’re wrong about this turd. They have to realize who he is themselves and not be told by a Democrat shaking their finger at them. Trying to win an argument with Trump or one of his supporters is like talking philosophy with my chickens. No matter what I say, they shit all over the land I love and strut around like they won anyway.

In this bizarre world we live in, fighting the idiotic and dictator-like things that Trump does or says only gives him fuel to do something more idiotic or dictator-like. Trump and his base know he’s made some horrible mistakes, but the more we try to make them admit he is wrong, the harder they argue he was right. The more the news calls him out on something, the more his talking heads defend him in prime time. We call him on one dumb thing, and a half dozen of his surrogates do some other dumb thing. We’re fighting a hydra of ignoramuses and incompetents. We’ve only adopted the stupid; he was born in it. We’re trying to put out a fire with gasoline and a bellows. We don’t need no water, let the muther-effer burn. We just need to concentrate on helping get people out before it’s ash and make plans to rebuild.